JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, May 5, 2025

Analysts: Lee’s win a UNC election boost

by

27 days ago
20250408

At least two po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts agree that the rul­ing in favour of David Lee in his mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice charge, is a boost for him and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) as the Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign in­ten­si­fies.

Act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles yes­ter­day dis­missed the charges of con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice against Lee, af­ter up­hold­ing a no-case sub­mis­sion pre­sent­ed by his le­gal team, led by Wayne Sturge and Mario Mer­ritt of Regius Cham­bers.

Mag­is­trate Charles ruled that the pros­e­cu­tion had pre­sent­ed in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to sus­tain the charges or pro­ceed to tri­al.

Re­act­ing to the de­vel­op­ment, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said the rul­ing was a wel­come one for Lee dur­ing the cam­paign.

“No­body wants to have any kind of mat­ter hang­ing over their head, so that’s a po­lit­i­cal boost for him ... It’s a win. I see it as a win for the UNC. It’s a win for David Lee in some ways. It’s a po­lit­i­cal bol­ster for both the UNC and David Lee,” he said.

On whether the rul­ing might af­fect the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s cam­paign strat­e­gy, Dr Mo­hammed said he does not be­lieve it will force a change in their mes­sag­ing or their ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion against UNC mem­bers.

“They’re not go­ing to change any­thing ... They’re go­ing to be un­apolo­getic. We are in a po­lit­i­cal war, so to speak, and they’re go­ing to do any­thing to spin the sto­ry. They’ll say the case was dropped on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty—doesn’t mean he’s in­no­cent,” he said.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­dera Sage­wan shared a sim­i­lar per­spec­tive.

“I’m sure he can now move for­ward with his po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­ing with­out this hang­ing over his head, and he can use this on the cam­paign trail to dis­miss the PNM’s at­tacks,” Sage­wan said.

Dr Sage­wan al­so ex­pressed the view that the rul­ing has put the UNC in a stronger po­si­tion when ad­dress­ing the pub­lic.

She, too, does not be­lieve it will change the way the PNM con­tin­ues with its cam­paign.

“I cer­tain­ly think they will con­tin­ue along sim­i­lar lines with re­spect to oth­er UNC mem­bers they be­lieve have ques­tion­able is­sues sur­round­ing them. I ex­pect them to dig their feet in even deep­er on those in­di­vid­u­als,” she said.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored